RS

MEMBER DIARY

The buck, uh, stops, uh … waitaminute, who said anything about a buck?

How low the Democrat party has sunk since the heady days when President Harry S. Truman adorned his desk with that now-infamous slogan! “The buck stops here.” Now that is leadership. I, of course, wasn’t alive during the Truman presidency and honestly haven’t studied his administration well enough to say one way or the other whether the words on that plaque were just that, or whether they were words he lived by. But the sentiment espoused in those four words — that is the very definition of leadership.

The Head of State — the Commander-in-Chief — in many ways, IS America. Her failures are his, and his successes, hers. At least, that’s how it used to be. Now? …

I suppose we modern Americans should’ve known we were in trouble when Bill “it wasn’t me” Clinton refused to cop to an affair he actually had — going so far as to specifically deny ever having “sexual relations with that woman” — until the stain showed up on her blue dress and he was finally forced to … uh … wax pseudophilosophical about the definition of “is.” And then, of course, rather than mainstream politicians and media asking how we could trust a man who would so willingly lie to the people who put him in charge, they acted as though the ones who told the truth were the monsters, and that the long-suffering clinton was some sort of martyr and hero. The Patron Saint of Cheaters and Liars.

Yeah. We probably should’ve known then that we were no longer dealing with “Buck Stops Here” Democrats. And, I suppose, many of us did. Even so, almost none of us were jaded enough to expect somebody like Barack Obama to come along.

Here’s a guy — a President, if you will (and 52% of us DID) — who, to hear him tell it, has never made a mistake in his life. Sure, he pays lip service to mistakes; but ask him to name one. This, in spite of the fact that he’s had more on-the-record “clarifications” of his statements than any “clean, articulate black man” in the history of the world. Including Kanye West.

President Obama hasn’t taken responsibility for anything at all in the first year of his Administration, and I have doubts he ever will. The economy? Bush’s fault. Afghanistan? Bush. His total failure to get an operational majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress to come together on a health bill? Republicans, of course. And, I’m sure, Bush. Somehow.

So, again, it should come as no surprise that, flying home after a failed bid to secure Chicago as the location for the 2016 Olympics, Obama again shrugged off responsibility. Listening to his speech on the matter, I was very nearly lulled into believing he may actually own his responsibility on that matter: “One of the things that I think is most valuable about sports is that you can play a great game and still not win,” he began. You can see, I think, how I thought for a second he might actually take the ball on this. But then he kept going:

And so although I wish that we had come back with better news from Copenhagen, I could not be prouder of my hometown of Chicago, the volunteers who were involved, Mayor Daley, the delegation and the American people for the extraordinary bid that we put forward.

<snip>

Again, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to put America’s bid together — not just Mayor Daley and the delegation, Pat Ryan, but most especially the thousands of Chicagoans who volunteered over these past few years. They put in their heart and soul into this bid.I have no doubt that it was the strongest bid possible, and I’m proud that I was able to come in and help make that case in person.

(emphasis mine)

I suppose we should be grateful the President even admitted he was there at all. But you notice how quickly he distanced himself from the bid itself. Not his bid. Their bid. “America’s Bid.” In a speech riddled, like most of Obama’s speeches, with the word “I,” it’s always interesting to see where he deliberately does not use it.

Of course, Obama surrogates and apologists are doing their part as well to remove responsibilty from Obama. All of which is kind of silly, given the relative unimportance of the issue. But, by God, you just can’t let it appear that THE ONE has failed. And so.

MSNBC — a “news” channel that is so in-the-tank for Barack Obama they’d probably consider changing their logo if Rahm Emanuel asked them to — softballed a conspiracy theory to David Axelrod, giving him the opportunity to blame political backscratching within the IOC for the failing bid.

(about two minutes in)

And now, of course, you have other apologists doing the inevitable and blaming Bush (about 8 paragraphs from the bottom).

The thing of it is, Brazil has never hosted an Olympic games. The U.S. had. Frankly, it was Rio’s turn, and, in spite of our problems here, they probably needed this more than we did. I find it interesting that, in their fervor to blame somebody, Obama’s people haven’t looked to this simplest of explanations.

Probably, suggesting that the President may have just had bad timing in this case is somehow racist.